![Barbara Winston uses a computer at her home in Northbrook, Ill., on Sunday, June 30, 2024, several days after taking an introduction to artificial intelligence class at a local senior center. “I saw ice boxes turn into refrigerators, that is how long I have been around, ... And I think [AI] is probably the greatest technical revolution that I will see in my lifetime,” she says. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford)](https://www.timesfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/AP24220579109047.jpg?w=1216)
NORTHFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The students — most with gray hair, some with canes, all at least in their 60s — couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
“Oh, my God,” whispered a retired college professor.
“Does it come with viruses?” wondered a bewildered woman scribbling notes in the second row.
A 79-year-old in a black-and-white floral shirt then asked the question on many minds: “How do you know if it is fake or not?”
This is how older adults — many of whom lived through the advent of refrigeration, the transition from radio to television and the invention of the Internet — are grappling with artificial intelligence: taking a class. Sitting in a classroom in an airy senior center in a Chicago suburb, the dozen students were learning about the latest — and possibly greatest — technological leap in their lives.